Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 110

ECHO’s huge, ancient palace among the stars is full of intrigue

Humanity has been looking up at the stars since we can remember, fascinated with the mystery and wonder promised by the vast expanse of space. For a very long time it was untouchable, destined to be spun into myth by societies with the desire but without the resources to understand why the sun and moon switched places every day. Now, of course, we can quantify phenomenons that would have been unbelievable a century ago, and the stars are a little less mysterious for it. Edgar Allen Poe sent a man in a balloon to the moon in 1835 and scientists all over the world began trying to do the same; now that we’ve left footprints there, we want to go even further.

for a very long time space was untouchable

Ultra Ultra, a new independent game studio from Copenhagen, is bringing us to a similar environment in their new game ECHO. It stars En, a girl of mysterious origin wandering through an empty spaceship. Fittingly, the first trailer reveals very little, showing En waking up alone in a darkened bedchamber, padding out barefoot through yawning hallways to be eclipsed by a brightening star. A few flashes of En buckled into a spacesuit, a shot of gilded furniture and an intricate wall more suited to a castle than a spaceship—the trailer ends with no indication of what she is to face or why. Perhaps that’s for the best: her narration hints at a mythic past to the place she’s exploring, and describes it as a “palace” promised to “only the worthy” of the civilization she’s left behind.

ECHO is described as “character-driven,” beginning as a journey through En’s discoveries in the palace with later challenges described as a combination of stealth and action. The palace’s dark hallways certainly seem ripe for a little sneaking around, reminiscent of SOMA’s (2015) underwater facility or System Shock’s (1994) alien-filled corridors. En’s personal quest, in contrast, seems more along the lines of Fullbright’s upcoming Tacoma.

The game has been live on Steam Greenlight since May 26th, making it into the top 100 within the first 24 hours, and is aiming for a release during fall of this year. The team at Ultra Ultra is obviously thrilled with the reception—after they conquer space with ECHO, their next goal is world peace.

Vote for ECHO on Steam Greenlight and follow Ultra Ultra on Facebook and Twitter .

The post ECHO’s huge, ancient palace among the stars is full of intrigue appeared first on Kill Screen.

Announcing Issue 8.5, our new digital-only zine

Hello everyone! It’s been six months since our successful Kickstarter, and we’ve been hard at work on our first issue. Thanks to the humbling generosity of our backers, we had the opportunity to disappear and knuckle down for a while, interviewing and designing and editing and quibbling over details. But as we worked, a little side project started to form, a collection of interviews that grew to deserve its own spotlight.

We’re calling it Issue 8.5, but it’s really its own unique bud of creative effort. Don’t think of it as a preview of the magazine—more that the work that went into planning the redesign sort of became its own beast, and we wanted to see that through to conclusion. Six of our best writers talked with six of our favorite designers, and the resulting conversations range from a deep dive into Marc ten Bosch’s enigmatic Miegakure to a look at the pain that underlies Jenny Jiao Hsia’s resolutely kawaii body of work.

Featuring the photography of David McDowell and the design work of Justin Kielbasa, Issue 8.5 is an exciting step toward the full redesign our backers funded. It’s also us thanking our readership the only way we know—that is, by giving you more of the very work you’ve shown your faith in.

You can get Issue 8.5 when it drops later this month by pre-ordering Issue 9 of our relaunched magazine, or subscribing. We hope you do that, and we hope you like it. We’re excited to unveil the full redesign soon.

Header image: Open book test. Get the point? by George Thomas

The post Announcing Issue 8.5, our new digital-only zine appeared first on Kill Screen.

The Sims finally loosens up its gender restrictions

Prior to last week, characters in The Sims 4 (2014) were at a bit of a paradox. They could have any skin color the player wanted—including nonexistent ones—move and present themselves in a variety of cartoonish manners, have one of dozens of slightly different styles of eyebrows or chin lengths (yes, chin lengths), and could even have different interests and life goals tailored to the player’s choice. But a man with long hair? That, apparently, was just too much.

Of course, it wasn’t that the game didn’t have any options for long hair available. In fact, there were almost as many as there were for chin length. But they were all hidden away in a separate section of the character creator meant for female Sims only, completely barring male characters from accessing them, as well as hundreds of other clothing and even body-type options. Similarly, women couldn’t access the options designed for male characters, making your blazer-wearing aunt Sally a bit difficult to create.

But now, after an update that’s been in the works for over a year, EA has torn down that wall between male and female Sims and, for the first time, will be allowing them to freely select options originally meant for the other without any issue. In addition to male dresses and female suits, the update also allows for body types previously unavailable in the game, such as broad-shouldered women and wide-hipped men, and even allows for Sims players to give their character any voice they like, regardless of gender.

All of which is to say that I may finally have a reason to buy a Sims game now. After all, growing up as a transgender woman, I’ve always had an interest in these kinds of character customization games. They were a great way for me to explore my identity back when I was younger and didn’t have access to as many real-life options for self-expression as I do now, and plenty of other trans people who grew up with games will tell you the same. But because of limitations like these, Sims has never interested me that much, despite being the most popular game in the genre. Yes, I could make a girl, but I could rarely make a girl that looked like me: broad shoulders, wide torso, deep(ish) voice and all.

I may finally have a reason to buy a Sims game now

The update isn’t perfect, of course, as non-binary people will still have to settle for identifying their character as either male or female. But it does bring The Sims more in line with what other games have been doing for decades now. For instance, in popular RPGs like Skyrim (2011) and World of Warcraft (2004), it is not at all uncommon to see a male character wearing a dress (and no, I’m not talking about robes), and Dark Souls even allows players to control their character’s hormone levels entirely separate from their sex, if they so choose. In games that pride themselves on player expression, not locking certain character creation options to gender seems to be becoming the rule rather than the exception. Just look at Saints Row.

It would make sense, then, that the game series most known for player expression would want to follow its peers after so much time lagging behind. After all, even for cisgender players, this new lack of limitations still presents new options that weren’t available before. For instance, the trailer for the new update shows a male character with an afro/headband combo and a female character with a pompadour, both of which are popular real-life styles that weren’t in the game until now. Essentially, this choice to remove arbitrary limitations works by staying in keeping with the series’ emphasis on freedom, as well as trends in games as a whole.

But ultimately, for me, the update means one thing: It is no longer easier for me to create a strange blue spaceman with an affinity for bowling, or a green frog person who just really likes fun, than it is for me to just create… myself.

The post The Sims finally loosens up its gender restrictions appeared first on Kill Screen.

Videogame shows you how hard it is to enter Berlin’s hottest nightclub

“Hell,” Sartre wrote in No Exit (1944), “is other people.” Presumably, the “especially at a night club”-qualifier was implicit. Some things go without saying.

Here, then, is the most chilling horror videogame of all time, Berghain Trainer, which employs your camera, microphone, and a series of questions to test if you can get into one of Berlin’s most famous nightclubs. Berghain, you see, is notoriously difficult to enter. Last year, GQ’s Burt Helm read a series of online posts about gaining access to the club to its chief bouncer, Sven Marquardt. “We’ve heard all those things, too,” the man with the barbed wire face tattoos told Helm. “But like I said, it’s subjective.” Indeed, subjectivity is essential to the club’s admissions policy and Marquardt has confessed that the composition of the crowd varies based on who’s at the door. This, per his interview with Helm, is part of his plan:

I feel like I have a responsibility to make Berghain a safe place for people who come purely to enjoy the music and celebrate—to preserve it as a place where people can forget about space and time for a little while and enjoy themselves. The club evolved from the gay scene in Berlin in the nineties. It’s important to me we preserve some of that heritage, that it still feels like a welcoming place for the original sort of club-goers. If we were just a club full of models, pretty people all dressed in black, it would be nice to look at for a half an hour, but god, that would be boring. It would feel less tolerant, too.

the game seems to always end in failure

All of which gets at the underlying futility of Berghain Trainer, which measures all sorts of parameters involving your facial expression and affect. Unless the game can get into Marquardt’s head, what does any of this matter? To that end, the game seems to always end in failure. In my three attempts to beat the game, which involves a three-question quiz, I could only ever ace the question about my age. Likewise, every member of Thump’s staff to try the simulator failed to gain entry. That, one might say, is what verisimilitude looks like.

Of course, Berghain Trainer’s name suggests that it is more than mere simulation. It is supposed to teach you something, but what exactly? Gaining access to Berghain, as Marquardt has steadily explained, is not something one can train for. Indeed, the subtext of his comments is that training is perhaps the worst thing you can do. But here’s Berghain Trainer, a meta-commentary on the futility of it all and the false promise of club scenes.

To quote preeminent German nightlife expert Groucho Marx, the main lesson of Berghain Trainer is that “I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.” Maybe it’s possible to beat the game. Stranger things have happened. Would that feel like a victory? Your facial expressions and vocal tone and answers match some random profile, congratulations! Best to stay at home, give the game a quick peek, and then do something else with your life.

You can try out Berghain Trainer in your browser.

The post Videogame shows you how hard it is to enter Berlin’s hottest nightclub appeared first on Kill Screen.

Juggalos rejoice: Insane Clown Posse is getting its own card game

If your knowledge on the Insane Clown Posse (shortened to ICP) is minimal, chances are you’ll know the musical duo not for their songs, but for their take on clown couture and inspiring the niche fanbase who call themselves Juggalos. There’s even a yearly festival for fans of ICP called “Gathering of The Juggalos” which I can only speculate to be an interesting experience.

However if you’re like me, you probably remember hearing about ICP through friends in middle school and all those recycled jokes about faygo and magnets. Maybe you went onto YouTube and searched one of their songs: who could forget Miracles? If you’re a fan of grown men clad in face paint and need more of hatchet gear in your life to fill the void, you’re in luck! You don’t need to know how magnets work in order to be attracted to Into The Echoside, the deck-building card game designed by ICP affiliate Jumpsteady and Louis Simpson.

prove yourself worthy and win the favor of the dark carnival

Pre-orders for the card game opened May 20th and will be available to all members of the Dark Carnival who choose to attend this year’s Gathering of the Juggalos on July 20th. It retails for $39.99, which is a pretty dope price considering that the cards feature fantastical characters and musical artists that Juggalos have come to know and love. According to the website, “Mad ninjas have been putting mad love towards producing this epic game that is sure to crush wigs into a fine powder”.

The game is intended for players 13+ (sorry youths) and designed for 2-4 players. As should be expected, it draws some parallels to other deck-building games, like Magic: The Gathering (comes with a 12 sided die, rule book). And the game does, of course, have different cards that serve specific purposes. “During the game, players will attempt to gain allies, obtain Items, get some Flavor, and encounter Fiends, all of which are represented on cards. There are hundreds of cards in the game (some more powerful than others), with each card categorized as one of eight different types.” Clearly, other deck-building games don’t have the rich subculture the ICP has fostered.

What about plot, you ask? Your quest is to prove yourself worthy and win the favor of the dark carnival. If you’re interested in entering the Nethervoid’s dark, cold depths you can pre-order your copy now.

Visit the website here for more information about Into The Echoside.

Header image by Scott Harrison/Getty Images

The post Juggalos rejoice: Insane Clown Posse is getting its own card game appeared first on Kill Screen.

Get ready to play as a cyberpunk bartender later this month

“This is a story about people daring to survive,” reads a title card in the latest and final trailer for VA-11 Hall-A, which could be considered an odd description for a cyberpunk bartending game. Called VA-11 Hall-A, it was originally borne of a cyberpunk game jam in 2014. A couple years, a prototype, and a free prologue chapter later, VA-11 Hall-A is finally on its way to existing on our one-day sentient PCs (for Windows, Mac, and Linux) on June 21st, with PlayStation Vita and iPad versions coming sometime later this year.

The titular bar in VA-11 Hall-A—affectionately called Valhalla by its patrons—reflects the everyday reality of its post-dystopian residents. As a lowly bartender, you combine ingredients to make bizarre drinks to your diverse customer’s liking. Your reward? A story. “[It’s] a really depressing society, where everyone’s always sad and worried about their future in a country with no hope of recovering,” explained art designer Christopher Ortiz in an interview with us back in 2014. “So we came up with a set of characters who, in the middle of this disaster, try to go on with their lives and be as happy as they can with what they have.”

The titular bar in VA-11 Hall-A reflects the everyday reality of its post-dystopian residents

VA-11 Hall-A’s visuals were inspired by cyberpunk PC-98 Japanese adventure games. But its focus relies on its bystander approach to a narrative. There’s no visual novel-esque choices to be had in this cyberpunk action game. While you interact with the bar patrons, the interactivity lies only in making their requested drinks correctly. There’s no dialogue options, just listening. Which so happens to be what the best bartenders do—listen to liquor-inhibited life stories, with no judgement.

Despite being pegged as “Cyberpunk Bartender Action,” VA-11 Hall-A distinguishes itself aside from that very pointed gameplay feature as well, in showcasing some of the other aspects of the game. Specifically of the non-bartending variety. The trailer takes a peek at the game’s apartment customization features (think Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer (2015) with a cyberpunky, ever-pixelated twist) and even the more story-driven conversational beats of the beer-sharing variety.

But, most important of all, you’re just a bartender, trying to get by and being an outsider to the stories of this post-dystopian, downtown bar. “You’re thrown into an ever-moving world, and things won’t wait for you to happen,” explained writer and programmer Fernando Damas to us back in 2014. “The characters all existed long before the player ever met them, and their lives go on offscreen. There’s a powerful feeling you get when you realize you’re in a place where you’re not in control of everything and there are things you just can’t change or avoid.”

Mix your favorite cyberpunkian drinks in VA-11 Hall-A when it’s out June 21st on Steam for PC, Mac, and Linux.

The post Get ready to play as a cyberpunk bartender later this month appeared first on Kill Screen.

Videogame guesses your age based on your reaction times

It’s commonly thought that one of the biggest contributors to skill is practice. So, it should follow that plenty of the best competitive videogame champions are older, having had more time to hone their skills. But this isn’t the case at all. Joe Hanson investigates this curiosity in a recent episode of the PBS Digital Studios series It’s Okay To Be Smart, asking “are older gamers at some disadvantage? Are their brains already over the hill?”

shortest lag between moving to a different section of a map and action is found at age 24

Hanson explains that in StarCraft 2 (2010), the simultaneous management of many different factors, along with precision in motor skills and memory, make the game a good test of several higher brain functions. Scientists analyzed thousands of games across various skill levels and found that elite players regularly have 300 actions per minute. But Hanson explains that the shortest lag between moving to a different section of a map and action is found at age 24. After that, it’s a sharp, steady decline. It’s not hard to see how this can add up to a big difference in overall play. But not all hope is lost for older players, since there isn’t a similar fall in multitasking skill.

In related news that will make you feel equally bad about aging, Just Park created a game that tries to guess your age using your reaction time. Interestingly, they mark 18-year-olds as the fastest reaction times in their tests, not the 24 years of age suggested by the studies discussed by Hanson. Of course different studies will come up with different results, and perhaps this difference can be explained by the different faculties being used in the games.

While Reaction Time only challenges the player’s reflexes, StarCraft 2 involves planning and reasoning. In addition, the actions of players over thousands of games may be a more robust study. Still, it’s a bit of fun (and sometimes embarrassing) to see how your reaction time ages you.

Watch more from It’s Okay To Be Smart here.

Test your Reaction Time here.

The post Videogame guesses your age based on your reaction times appeared first on Kill Screen.

Aussie esports go global with Australian Cyber League

This article is part of a collaboration with iQ by Intel .

A new partnership between the Australian Cyber League and Electronic Sports League gives the country an edge in worldwide competitive gaming. The Australian professional gaming scene has seen a boom in recent years, reaching ever further into the mainstream with the help of the Australian Cyber League’s new partnership. From Andrew Masterson of the Sydney Morning Herald  declaring that, “Your mum was wrong, videogames are not a waste of time, especially if you’re playing League of Legends (2009) for $3 million,” to Leigh Sales of the 7:30 Report stating that “competitive online multiplayer videogames have become big business,” it’s clear esports are now hard to ignore in the country. And, as a result, Australia is demonstrating its full capabilities as a competitor on an international scale.

With the broadcast of Crown Casino’s Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (2012) tournament on Australian pay-TV this past October, competitive gaming took front-and-center in people’s very homes. There’s no denying the huge audience that has grown around esports, with Superdata Research finding that it reaches 134 million viewers worldwide in a report published in May this year. The recent League of Legends 2015 World Championships alone clocked an average concurrent viewership of 4.2 million, and a total viewership of 334 million individual impressions.

Photo courtesy of ACL and Dylan Esguerra

The Australian Cyber League (ACL) has been a big part of the growth of esports in Australia, brokering deals with big-name publishers and hardware vendors to run events, sponsor teams, and centralize support for local grassroots events. In August the ACL announced a partnership with the Electronic Sports League (ESL), a worldwide leader in esports based primarily in Europe. “With the ESL being a global leader in esports, we’re able to work very closely together on international tournaments,” said Australian Cyber League Director Nick Vanzetti. “In 2015, even though we were still operating as the ACL at the time and it was less official, we already fed into a Counter-Strike global tournament [mentioned above], and ran the qualifiers for the Asia region in the ESL One tournament in Cologne. Basically there’s a lot more linking that we can do with international programs.”

Organizations like the Australian Cyber League and Electronic Sports League operate on three fronts, and Vanzetti believes that the partnership will strengthen all three for Australia. The first provides localized support for brand owners to get their games in front of Australian audiences. “We’re running a global campaign to help service our clients like Activision and Blizzard and their titles,” Vanzetti said. They also provide avenues for local players to compete worldwide. “There’s a lot more global consistency and opportunities for Australian teams and players to get along to international tournaments, a much clearer pathway.” Thirdly, they help to promote and distribute the content generated by those events to the global esports audience, via partnerships with Crown Casino and Fox Sports for the aforementioned Counter-Strike Invitational broadcast, and with gaming expo PAX Australia, where the Electronic Sports League stage dominated one side of the hall this year.

We can sort of ‘level-up’ now

“More legitimate, larger-scale activity,” is the future that the ACL/ESL partnership will be bringing, according to Vanzetti. “The [Australian Cyber League] model in the past has been very much about grassroots gaming, and events in universities and venues in different cities. “We can sort of ‘level-up’ now, and put on some bigger events, and gain access to larger sponsorships that make these events feasible. This all means there’s more activity for people to participate in, or more content to watch for the wider esports community.” When asked whether the partnership would also produce any challenges, Vanzetti remained optimistic. “I think it was a very clear and easy decision for us. ESL really is the global leader. We see it making the right steps and moves in esports internationally.”

This sentiment was echoed by Tony Trubridge, founder and managing director of the venerable and Intel-sponsored Team Immunity. “ACL have the ability to create some great events and with the finance and experience ESL brings to bear, it’s hard to view this partnership as anything other than good for Australian esports.” Trubridge believes that the partnership will increase competition, and provide teams with a local avenue to international competition “This is something only large teams such as ourselves have been capable of achieving. Should their results dictate, much smaller teams will now have the opportunity to compete on a global scale.”

Photo courtesy of ACL and Dylan Esguerra

The partnership between the Australian Cyber League and the Electronic Sports League is an exciting step forward for a country that has already proved its metal in a worldwide phenomenon. With top Australian teams like Avant Garde heading to the Smite World Championships after an exciting win on the ESL stage at PAX Australia last year, and an Aussie team competing under the Renegades banner in the televised Turner esports league coming in 2016, the country appears unstoppable. Given that reports are predicting that the global audience for esports will exceed 310m viewers by 2020, there has never been a better time for Australia to become a true powerhouse in competitive gaming.

 Header image courtesy of ACL and Dylan Esguerra

The post Aussie esports go global with Australian Cyber League appeared first on Kill Screen.

A real-life table version of Atari’s Pong is on the way

Pong (1972) is such a simple game. Almost any person could draw it on a piece of paper if prompted. Two tall blocks, a smaller square, and a few lines—that’s Pong. That’s why recreating the classic arcade game in the real world requires a little more effort for it to stand out. And that’s exactly what Daniel Perdomo dedicated two years of his life towards.

Perdomo created a large, real-life Pong table, kinda like one of those air hockey tables, but with a bit more engineering behind it. “It all started as a challenge for fun. Like a hobby in my free time,” Perdomo told me. He didn’t have any experience with electronics or programming. Instead, Perdomo used the internet to learn everything he needed to know. As he put it, he was “learning on demand.”

it looks almost unreal

The idea to create a Pong table came from an unlikely moment. After playing around with some magnets with his daughter, Perdomo realized he could use the magnets to recreate the smooth bat-and-ball play of Pong. It’s a connection that shouldn’t come as a surprise. “Atari and Pong marked my childhood’s generation deeply. I was about eight years old when I got my Atari 2600 and it was pure magic!” Perdomo said. After playing the game for years he fell in love with Pong and Atari.

Once Perdomo started working on the project he found the hardest part was trying to recreate the way the game feels using magnets. The first prototypes and concepts were rough and didn’t work. But Perdomo quickly improved the feel of the game with further refinements to the magnets.

“The main challenge was to reach the perfect balance between magnet strength, distance, weight of the ball and surface type,” explained Perdomo. “If the magnets are too weak the ball can’t follow the sudden direction changes, but if the magnets are too strong the friction over the playfield is huge and the ball can’t move fast enough either.”

After two years of designing, testing, and tweaking, Perdomo and his team had finally created something that not only looked like the classic game, but felt like it too. The original Pong has a very smooth feel to it, a very analog feel. The paddle controller allowed for precise control. Perdomo’s Pong table recreates that feeling of precision and silky smooth movement. Watching the table in action it looks almost unreal. It looks like that simple game has actually jumped off the TV screen and into the real world.

Even Perdomo can’t believe how well it turned out. “I am very surprised with the results. I thought I had a great idea and decided to take the challenge, but I didn’t imagined it would get this far!”

Now Perdomo and his team have ambitions to not only improve on the table, but to bring it to the market. The team has already received many offers and is looking to create a version that could be mass produced and sold to anyone who has a desire to experience the simple fun of Pong in a whole new way.

You can find out more about the Table Pong Project over on its website.

The post A real-life table version of Atari’s Pong is on the way appeared first on Kill Screen.

Literature games and the future of book publishing

It was called “the end of days” for literature. Bold doomsaying letters across headlines predicted that with the financial crisis of 2007-2008, the era of books would meet its untimely end, and the larger publishing world would be rendered obsolete. But traditional books didn’t die—they simply fled into the digital world and returned with new forms, the technologically-savvy ebook and digital story app. The need to diversify the medium that arose during this era is, in part, what may have kept sales of books rising through the apocalyptic flames. It pushed against any stubbornness in the publishing world and proved that both page and screen could work in tandem to tell, and sell, stories. There is a similar effort coming from the other side of this dichotomy, in the form of videogames that are experimenting with becoming more literary in nature. The parallels here prompt the question of whether it is imminent that the two increasingly amorphous mediums—books and videogames—may intersect to present a whole new manner of storytelling.

There are those who believe that intersection is already happening. Publishing company Madefire hypothesizes that the innovation of non-visual storytelling that we are most familiar with, such as books, is inevitable—visual, digital stories present a new way to further explore how we can most effectively or most interestingly tell a story. I was curious to test Madefire’s claim. Through the Madefire app, I bought a comic book version of a Japanese retelling of The Brothers Grimm’s Snow White, and sincerely enjoyed the interactivity of the comic. The app panned across and zoomed in on dialogue, like a moving camera that ensured that I focused on the narrative without moving a panel ahead. It felt almost cinematic, or as if it were a magical comic book straight out of Hogwarts. With a tap of my finger, another panel emerged; Snow White is shown walking across my phone screen through falling snow as more text is revealed. The unfolding panels and moving characters are reminiscent of the Emote Lite 2D animation technology boasted by D3 Publisher’s otome games (narrative-based visual novels specifically targeted towards women), where characters are seen on the screen similarly moving their mouths and making subtle gestures. Throw a few dialogue choices and branching story lines into the Madefire digital books, and yeah, you’d have a range of decent otome games.

a reading experience that felt akin to watching a cutscene in a video game

Sure, the Madefire app is meant to tell stories, to bring books to life, but if you were to ask me whether it felt more like an digital book app or more like a visual novel (considered a videogame despite the misleading name) I’m not sure I could decide. The digital comic book version of Snow White, like any traditional book, gave me no dialogue choices and hardly any autonomy—I couldn’t even speed up the pace at which the text and panels moved like you can in most otome games and visual novels. But there were aspects of this digital book medium presented by Madefire that felt very visual novel-esque, in ways no book or ebook I’ve known could be, resulting in a reading experience that felt akin to watching a cutscene in a videogame.

Tapas Media is another company seeking to blur the line between books and games as storytelling mediums through a free mobile app system. Tapas is unique because it uses the concept of “free-to-play” games but applies it to mobile reading. For example, for every chapter (which Tapas calls “episodes”) of a book you read, you can obtain and use in-app gift boxes, or peer-to-peer rewarded sharing. In other words, you can read a free book, and in doing so, unlock episodes of other books—you can also purchase virtual “keys” to unlock certain books. As their website touts, the Tapas app is “Candy Crush Saga meets mobile content”—insofar as Candy Crush was aimed at “casual gamers,” Tapas’s books are aimed at “casual readers.” There are little to no illustrations or moving images in a Tapas story, unless you choose to read a comic, but the mechanics of obtaining more stories are certainly game-like, and purposefully so.  

Madefire and Tapas both present examples of publishers breaking into the digital realm. But unlike Madefire and Tapas, newly emerged company Simogo isn’t a book publisher; it’s a Swedish game studio that makes games that read a lot like literature. Sort of. Simogo specializes in games without a genre—as Simogo states on its website, “we’re not overly concerned about whether or not [our products] are even games.” As such, Simogo has created apps like Device 6 (2013), described as “a surreal thriller in which the written word is your map, as well as your narrator.” At its core, Device 6 is an app that seeks to tell a story, but also allow the reader to interact with aspects of the story.

For example, as the main character Anna finds a “curious lock-like device,” the reader scrolls through the text to find a moving picture of said device and can click it, even play with it. When Anna is walking down a hall, the very sentence describing her movement shifts across the screen in the direction she is walking. It’s the text of the story itself that draws the reader forward, literally: the app takes advantage of your phone’s accelerometer and follows the text no matter what angle the phone is held at. And instead of branching decision trees like in a game, the text itself divides into branches, leading to different outcomes of the story. I could choose, for instance, for Anna to stay walking on the ground floor by merely reading forward, or I could begin reading a path that forces Anna to walk downstairs, where the sentence splits off and meanders literally downward. The text is the story, and also the space, the setting, and the geography.

As Madefire and these other companies are surely aware, some videogames present an excellent medium for not only storytelling, but also for the retelling of books. In particular, narratological games present a scenario where a story reader can balance the line between complicit observer and active participant of the narrative. Unlike books, such games provide player autonomy within the scope of a broader story, allowing interactivity with a set environment and its characters. The player, like the protagonist, becomes involved in the storytelling process and perhaps even the storymaking process, too. Such games like Device 6 are becoming a new kind of literature, a synthesis of the narratological and even the mechanics-based ludological parts of games, which together create a system of outcomes in a story, thus making a story more dynamic.  

a reader can balance the line between complicit observer and active participant of the narrative

Scholar Jonathan Ostenson posits of the evolution of games: “There’s a place for a purposeful study of videogames… because they represent some of the most important storytelling in the 21st century. This new medium… represents our society’s efforts to push the boundaries of storytelling in meaningful ways,” which shows that at least some videogames can share the literary quality of a book. In his view, the intersection of videogames and books, as the two mediums further evolve, is almost a natural one—the seeds of which have been sowed—resulting in the digitalization and increased interactivity of books, as well as games with lush worlds and characters robust as any other literature. And maybe he’s onto something: The Witcher videogame series is one popular example of a game studio taking a story originally told through the medium of books and relaying it through the lens of a videogame. The games are based on a series of Polish novels written by Andrzej Sapkowski, and allow fans an unprecedented level of interactivity, moving the fantasy from paper to screen. Another example can be found in the game 80 Days (2015) by inkle Ltd., which is based on the classic 1873 Jules Verne novel, Around the World in 80 Days. And conversely, Dungeons & Dragons, the role-playing tabletop game, began as a kind of analog story, albeit with some game mechanics, but later became the foundation for several videogames, such as the Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights series. Book authors themselves have made the switch between mediums, such as Sam Maggs of The Fangirl’s Guide to the Galaxy: A Handbook for Girl Geeks (2015) fame, who is now one of BioWare’s newest game writers.

That some videogames are now giving the option of two separate play styles—story-driven or tactics-focused—could perhaps be further indicative of the potential meeting of mediums. This is the case for the latest installment in the Fire Emblem series, released earlier this year. Nintendo offered two versions of the same game, each presenting a different side of the same story: Birthright, which is story-focused, and Conquest, which is tactics-driven and is generally more difficult. Giving players the choice to play games that allow a focus on storyline is significant because it acknowledges that maybe some games or modes can, for all intents and purposes, be read rather than played. Indeed, it appears the only significant difference between a book and a videogame is their level of interactivity. It’s this difference that divides the digital novel from the otome game, for example, despite both often involving heavy amounts of text. Digital novels are comprised of primarily text, but require no interaction with the story, whereas otome games are also comprised of significant amounts of text, but require interactivity to change the outcome of the story.

Writer Maxwell Neely-Cohen suggests that the “literary world and the videogame world could greatly benefit each other,” and further that “even a conversation, let alone the beginning of real collaborations and dialogues, would help each contend with their respective shortcomings,” such as the lack of diverse representation across both mediums. To this point, Neely-Cohen further writes that “publishers [c]ould collaborate with indie game developers,” much like a comic book writer collaborates with an artist, and that “literary magazines and libraries [c]ould sponsor gamejams,” increasing accessibility and inclusivity by providing their unique writing resources and beta readers to game writers. Some book publishers are already dipping their toes into the depths of the music industry, creating soundtracks for books. A logical next step could be that videogames become a medium for book publishing, as publishing companies like Madefire appear to be doing already. Either way, the rise of ebook sales in both unit and dollar terms means the digitalization of stories is, at least for now, inevitable, and how that will affect videogames is something to watch out for.  

Header via simogo.com

The post Literature games and the future of book publishing appeared first on Kill Screen.